Thousands march to protest shooting of Turkish judges over headscarf ruling

[JURIST] Thousands of Turks marched in Ankara on Thursday to denounce the shooting of five judges [JURIST report] Wednesday in the Council of State [official website], Turkey's highest administrative court. The judges were shot by an attacker, reported to be a lawyer, who disagreed with a recent ruling made by the court denying a promotion to a teacher because she wore a religious headscarf. The march led to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk [Wikipedia profile], the founder of the modern secular Turkey who outlawed religious dress [JURIST news archive] in many public places, where the protesters wept over the attack and endorsed Turkey's secularism. The shooting and Thursday's march highlighted the tension [AP report] between the secular population and the pro-Islamist government led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [official website], whose wife is banned from state functions because she wears a headscarf and who vehemently criticized [JURIST report] the ruling that prompted the gunman.

According to reports, Turkish authorities detained two people on Thursday in addition to the gunman, who was captured immediately after the shooting. Judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin died on Wednesday after undergoing surgery to remove a bullet from his brain, and one other judge is reported to be in intensive care. Reuters has more.

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